Month: August 2010

On Thursday, August 19th & Friday, August 20th the owners and senior managers of Duro-Last® met with the members of the Duro-Last Contractor’s Advisory Board in Chicago. On Thursday, the group watched the Chicago Cubs take on the San Diego Padres from the rooftop of 3639 Sheffield Avenue, located directly across the street from Wrigley Field’s right field wall. The group enjoyed food and drinks while watching the Cubs fail to execute the fundamentals of baseball, including covering home plate.

On Friday morning Duro-Last senior managers updated the Advisory Board on the 2010 sales year to date and corporate goals. Some of the highlights of the meeting included: Tim Hart explaining how and why Duro-Last received the 2010 Oregon Sustainability Award, Keith Gere’s engineering update and proposals for new products, Steve Przybylski’s elaborate and in depth manufacturing update, and Art Gilles’ new product offerings from EXCEPTIONAL® Metals. The contractors, led by Contractor Advisory Board President Michael Faught of Roberts McNutt Inc., then offered their insight and input, including: future opportunities for advertising & marketing including the exploration of a national advertising campaign, how to attract and retain more national accounts, new product offerings, and their desire to see more warranty options in the future.

Everyone at Duro-Last would like to convey their sincere appreciation to the members of the Contractor Advisory Board. My grandfather John Burt, the founder of Duro-Last, always said that he got some of his best ideas from the people who installed the product . . . the contractors! That’s still one of our guiding principles: listening to the customer. The Duro-Last family would also like to extend their thoughts and prayers to George Bock of Mid-Western Commercial Roofers. George was recently involved in a car accident and was unable to attend the meeting; however Michael did a great job of conveying George’s key points. We look forward to see George and all of the members of the Contractor Advisory Board at our next meeting in Orlando, just prior to the 2011 National Sales Seminar.

I’ve been to plenty of real, in-the-flesh trade shows, all with the common attributes of cheesy attention-getting devices, expensive, overpriced food served by surly staff, achy feet, and staffers who are actually sitting down in their booths (are you kidding me?). In recent years, I’ve managed to avoid attending most industry events (sorry, media reps), but one popped up last week that I couldn’t resist.

The “Event Lobby” provided access to an Exhibit Hall with vendor booths, a Resource Center, a Networking Lounge, and an Auditorium, where Duro-Last’s own Drew Ballensky presented the webinar, High-Performance Vinyl Roofing – an Active Asset.

On the whole, it was a good event for us. We had interactions with over 400 people, either in our booth or during our webinar and the subsequent chat session. Lots of folks downloaded materials from the booth and chatted with Duro-Last staffers about a variety of roofing and sustainability topics.

I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this type of thing going forward. The availability of information to show attendees was good and our investment was reasonable, given the number of contacts we received. And we avoided travel and living costs for staffers, who handled their shifts from the comfort of their cozy cubicles – yes, sitting down.

The Global Green Expo is available “on demand” at this link until November 5, 2010.

This annual event has taken place at all of our locations every summer for the past 16 years. Over 365 employees were served by the owners of the companies. During the luncheon, employees were able to purchase tickets to take a turn immersing members of senior management in a dunk tank. Over $175.00 was raised, and all proceeds were donated to Hidden Harvest, a Saginaw, Michigan, charity.

All employees were given a chance to “Spin to Win” fun prizes, such as restaurant gift cards, hats, golf shirts, and first aid kits – where everyone walked away a winner. In all, the day turned out to be very successful with cooperative weather and everyone having a great time.